5 SECTION 1 - FOREWORD AN OPEN NETWORK AND INDEPENDENCE FROM DAY ONE Optical fibres have become the arteries of our economy. Terabytes of data flow through tiny optical fibres, from one part of the world to another and back again. Critical processes at banks, insurance companies, government offices or telecommunications companies would be impossible without these fibre-optic arteries. This growing demand for bandwidth can only be satisfied by deploying fibreoptic networks on a large scale. While a barge loaded with sand (the raw material of optical fibre) heads down the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal towards Amsterdam, Alex Goldblum and Bart Oskam discuss their company with passion. They are the directors of Eurofiber, the largest independent provider of optical fibre for the business market in the Netherlands, Belgium and parts of Germany. In a distinctive office in Maarssen, with a view over one of the oldest infrastructures in the country, a canal, they look back at ten years of Eurofiber s presence in the Dutch market. It has been a turbulent decade which began with the liberalisation of the Dutch telecommunications market and the establishment of many new telecom companies, competing with Royal Dutch Telecom (KPN). The startup Eurofiber saw an opportunity to build and operate an independent fibre-optic network and acted upon it. Launching customers recognised the value of an independent network operator and signed up quickly, including Libertel (now Vodafone), Orange (now T-Mobile), Versatel (now Tele2) and BaByXL (now KPN). Alex: It was 5

6 a bold and visionary plan. Eurofiber said: We only offer optical fibre, and purely in an open model, meaning there is no lock in to buy other services. Now it sounds obvious, but ten years ago it wasn t. Telecom operators were vertically integrated and didn t sell fibre without selling the services on top. Most consumers were still connecting to the internet with a 64 kbps dial-up connection, and were content with the speed. ADSL still wasn t widespread, and mobile phones were predominantly used for making business calls. However, our very first customers could see that the telecommunications landscape would change drastically in the near future, and they chose Eurofiber. Without exception, they are still our valued partners to this day, and throughout this time, we have been able to help each other grow into significant players in the Dutch market. WE BELIEVE IN THE OPEN MODEL, WHICH WE HAVE FIRMLY EMBEDDED IN OUR APPROACH TO THE MARKET. Bart adds: That says a great deal about the quality of the vision which Eurofiber brought to the market ten years ago. It was an excellent vision, and it still holds true today. Shortly after Eurofiber was established, the worldwide demand for fibre-optic cables collapsed as a result of the bursting of the internet bubble in 2001/2002 and the ensuing global economic decline. During that period, billions of euros worth of intercontinental cables lay neglected on land and at the bottom of the sea, owned by now bankrupt telecom companies. However, Eurofiber suffered relatively little as a result of the collapsing demand for fibre-optic connections. How was this possible? Right from the early days, we started meshing the network, which means we would install connections between cities and from there we would fan out to interesting locations within a city: data centres, business premises and Royal Dutch Telecom local exchanges, explains Bart. We realised early on that the value is in local access. This is because a finely-meshed network creates unique configurations which can give potential customers direct access to optical fibre. And this is where the difference really lies, not in long distances. And we keep on investing. Over the past decade, we have installed a national network of more than 10,000 kilometres of fibreoptic cable and connected over 3,500 locations. We will continue this growth unabated in the years ahead. The two men keep coming back to Eurofiber s total independence since the start. Alex: We believe in the open model, which we have firmly embedded in our approach to the market. In our view, there should be a complete separation between network and services. Our customers can add the services they need on top of our network. The advantage? Freedom. If you are unhappy with a solution provider, you can just switch to a different one, while the infrastructure simply remains in place. 6

7 SECTION 1 - FOREWORD Since 2006, Eurofiber has been owned by the Dutch investment company Reggeborgh, based in Rijssen. Although the term optical fibre generally makes people think of light, the company also supplies managed dark fibre connections. In this case, the optical fibre is not lit by Eurofiber, but by the customer. Alex: Typically, our customers tend to lease fibreoptic connections for a relatively long period. They include telecom companies as well as multinationals with their own ICT departments. They transmit large quantities of data to and from the connected sites. To do so, they install their own hardware and software and we ensure that the fibreoptic connection is monitored 24/7 and remains intact. Spectacular improvements in optical fibre and increasingly powerful lasers mean that the light signal can now easily cover a distance of eighty kilometres without amplification. On a Eurofiber fibre-optic connection which was made available free of charge, the University of Amsterdam is researching ways to improve the quality of the light still further. As Bart says: By using several colours of light, it is possible to transmit several data flows over one optical fibre. In laboratories, 144 colours of light have already been sent down a single optical fibre and tests are being carried out with even more colours. This means that the capacity of optical fibre will continue to increase. It is hard to imagine modern operational management without the use of optical fibre. As a result of more demanding applications and cloud computing, amongst other things, data flows have increased to such an extent that the traditional copper wire is now almost obsolete, despite the available compression techniques. In small and medium enterprises (SMEs), fibre to the office (FttO) is also increasingly becoming a prerequisite for efficient operational management. However, SMEs lack the money and knowhow to connect their own hardware and software to optical fibre. They are unwilling or unable to invest in such expensive equipment. For these customers, we have been offering Ethernet services from 10 Mbps since 2006, explains Alex. Eurofiber organises everything except the ICT services. Customers can purchase these from one of our partners. In other words, we are an independent provider of transport services which, since the introduction of Ethernet, not only provides the information highway but also the empty trucks on that highway. The actual cargo of the trucks can be obtained from Eurofiber s ICT partners who are required to pass our strict selection process. For heavy data users, we have been offering a third solution since 2009: dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). Using this technology, each data flow over the optical fibre has its own light source and the associated wavelength. You send different colours of laser light down the optical fibre, as it were. To continue the same analogy: DWDM allows us to offer customers their own lane of the highway. And the capacity is enormous: up to 100 DVDs per second (400 Gbps) can be transported effortlessly from A to B! Over the past ten years, the view of optical fibre has changed completely. Both for private homes and offices, the trend towards fibre-optic connectivity is irreversible. In 7

8 8

9 SECTION 1 - FOREWORD the business market, this development cannot be stopped, confirms Bart. If one looks at offices, we are using an increasing number of business applications, databases and servers which are physically situated in different locations, for example in professional data centres or on the internet. Cloud computing is a frequently used term for this phenomenon. What it comes down to is that the ICT leaves the business premises and is accessed from a distance. This has many advantages, particularly with regard to reliability, scalability and reducing costs. However, you must be able to bridge this distance quickly and with sufficient bandwidth. A fibre-optic connection is indispensable here. Companies which use optical fibre for ICT as a service are more innovative and efficient. They have more freedom of choice and incur lower costs. The resources and time which are freed up as a result can then be spent on the company s core activities and developing new products or services. Eurofiber can face the future with confidence. Business users have a hunger for bandwidth which can barely be satisfied. Developments such as cloud computing, as well as new and more flexible working methods, are only serving to increase this hunger. The mobile telecom networks can only handle the fastgrowing demand for capacity using optical fibre. All in all, the wireless networks of the future will be finely-meshed fibre-optic networks with a sophisticated antennae on top, says Bart with a smile. With the arrival of super HD and 3D TV, the media and entertainment sector will also be responsible for a huge increase in bandwidth usage. As the sound of the barge with its cargo of sand fades into the distance, at the last minute Alex outlines another new development: Decentralised power generation and distribution can only be organised efficiently with an underlying fibre-optic network. Intelligent control equipment must be used to handle the distribution of current between the large diversity of energy sources, the local power generators and the tens of thousands of local switching stations. The energy networks of the future will therefore have major similarities with the telecommunications networks of today. But whether energy or information is flowing through the arteries, it must be transported in an efficient and reliable way. From anywhere, to anywhere. This development will make the energy sector a major driving force in the further fibering of our economy. Who could have predicted that ten years ago? Finally, we come to the question of the secret behind Eurofiber s success. The two men don t even have to consider the answer for a second. Bart puts it as follows: Our people are the driving force behind our company. They were in the past, they are now, and they always will be. We have an extremely enthusiastic and motivated team who do everything they can to make Eurofiber a success. And our customers can tell. For Alex and me, it is an honour to manage this winning team. 9

10 THE COMPANY EUROFIBER S LOGO HAS BEEN A STYLISED ELEPHANT FOR SIX YEARS NOW. IT IS NOT AN ABSTRACT EMBLEM WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT BITS AND BYTES IN SOME FANCY WAY, JUST AN ANIMAL WITH A WINNING AND CONSTANT NATURE. As a species, Elephantidae are solid, reliable, communicative, friendly and intelligent. These are the same values which Eurofiber embraces. Did you know that an elephant is also a communication specialist? To talk over long distances, elephants use infrasound. These are sound waves with such a low frequency that they cannot be heard by the human ear. So how does the elephant hear them? By placing his sensitive trunk on the ground, the elephant can pick up the vibrations; the trunk acts as a fibre-optic cable which transmits the information. To continue the analogy, reliability is also evident from the relationship which Eurofiber has established with the users of its network. The very first customers are still using the fibre-optic infrastructure, because of the high-quality network and the constant dedication of the members of Eurofiber s team. In the autumn of 2010, T-Mobile and its internet subsidiary Online decided to continue the relationship for at least another twenty years. The telecom group asked Eurofiber to connect its thousands of antenna 10

11 SECTION 2 - THE COMPANY locations via optical fibre to the backbone which has already been fibered by Eurofiber. The company s independent nature played a significant role in this agreement. Not many people realise that almost half the mobile communication traffic in the Netherlands flows through Eurofiber s network. According to market experts, intelligence lies in having the courage to look ahead. In this world, in which quarterly figures are king, Eurofiber is not afraid to install tens of millions of euros worth of fibre-optic network, preparing the Dutch economy for the future. Since Eurofiber was established, the staff have always wanted to lead the way in installing and managing fibreoptic networks. Eurofiber s birth coincided with the privatisation of Royal Dutch Telecom (KPN) a year earlier, and the Dutch telecommunications market was also liberalised in this period. These two developments created the platform for Eurofiber s growth. Many people from the company s early days are still working there, and have succeeded in this anniversary year in breaking through the frontier of 10,000 kilometres of optical fibre and acquiring more new users along the way. Why are they still there after ten years? It s a challenging market with enormous growth potential. 11

12 Review of Establishment of Eurofiber Nederland B.V. Eurofiber Belgium began life on the IJzerlaan in Brussels and Eurofiber Nederland on the Paasheuvelweg. The sales department was run by Johan Oostveen in Brussels. This meant commuting between Amsterdam and Brussels several times a week. May 2000: Work started on the installation of the Randstad ring between Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague. Length 500 kilometres. November 2000: First handover of Amsterdam fibre-optic ring, to Teleglobe. December 2000: Start of Global Metro Networks Amsterdam project installation of Amsterdam city ring February 2001: BaByXL contract - Facts & Figures Eurofiber meshing to local exchanges in the four major cities. Coining of the terms Segment lease order and Cascade : not the sale of complete rings like all the other providers, but segments. SLA of 8-hour recovery time was created for this contract. Later, Eurofiber was able to use this as a USP for other customers. January 2002: Start of Amsterdam bank project. City ring with 25 sites. Customer purchased an entire cable. February 2002: Contract concluded with Libertel to connect the four major cities in the Randstad. October 2002: Start of Dutchtone project. Installation of a Randstad ring between Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Rotterdam, as well as four city rings. Creation of a connection between Antwerp and Rotterdam. November 2003: Start of T-Mobile project. Installation of city rings in Amsterdam, Breda, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht. February 2004: Network expanded by 175 kilometres in Den Bosch, Tilburg and Breda. November 2004: Major national roll-out network expanded by 1,200 kilometres. The network grew from 1,900 to 3,100 kilometres in the north, east and south of the Netherlands. Vodafone, Tiscali and T-Mobile were the requesting and purchasing parties in this roll-out. June 2005: Takeover of Northern Light Rail. Network grew to 3,300 kilometres. Expansion of Amsterdam-Groningen-Hamburg line. May 2000: The ILOVEYOU virus caused huge problems for organisations and private computer users all over the world. November 2000: The International Space Station became manned permanently. December 2000: George W. Bush was elected president of the United States. January 2002: Twelve of the fifteen member states of the European Union adopted the euro. Sweden, Denmark and the UK retained their own currencies. February 2002: Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander married the Argentinian Máxima Zorreguieta. Facts & Figures World October 2002: In the American city of Chicago, the British athlete Paula Radcliffe broke the women s world marathon record with a time of 2: November 2003: Taiwan took delivery of the highest building in the world. The Taipei 101 has 101 floors and is 508 metres tall. January 2004: The unmanned spacecraft Mars Exploration Rover-A landed on Mars. November 2004: The online game The World of Warcraft was released by Blizzard Entertainment in North America, Australia and New Zealand. The game was sold 240,000 times during the first 24 hours. June 2005: Princess Alexia, the second daughter of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima, was born in the Bronovo hospital in The Hague. The International Space Station 12

13 SECTION 2 - THE COMPANY Eurofiber s hands-on mentality has not passed unnoticed in the outside world. Both in 2009 and 2010, the company won the Best Managed Companies programme run by Deloitte, the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, TiasNimbas Business School and the Management Team business journal. This makes Eurofiber one of the fifty best-managed companies in the Netherlands in the SME sector. In addition, the good personnel policy building the Eurofiber family was awarded the 2009 Gold Lighthouse by the MonitorGroup market research organisation. according to staff, this will be the case for many years to come, despite the growing number of tables laid for lunch and the fact that the number of sandwiches at lunchtime is fast approaching industrial quantities. After all, as many large companies have found: you grow by retaining an entrepreneurial mentality. And you remain successful by staying small. In ten years Eurofiber has grown into a company which can no longer be regarded as a startup, however it has still managed to retain a pioneering mentality. And 13

15 SECTION 2 - THE COMPANY WE DO EVERYTHING WE CAN FOR OUR CUSTOMERS AND COLLEAGUES Edwin Heijne and Lars Alkema have been with the company from the start. They began working for Eurofiber in the spring of 2000, with Lars in Belgium and Edwin in the Netherlands. In an office with no carpet and no desks. We only had a few garden chairs. Nothing else, Edwin can still remember. We built up the company with a pioneering spirit in those early days. That desire to fight, to do everything we can for our customers and colleagues, still exists in the company. We would do anything for our customers and this really stems from those early days. Ten years later, Lars manages the activities in Belgium and Edwin is the architect of the underground fibre-optic network. Around the year 2000, we were the first to fibre the cities of Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht. In Belgium, we already had urban networks in Antwerp and Brussels and connections between these two cities. We ran our first pilots in Later that year, we connected 32 bank branches to our network. 15

16 16

17 SECTION 2 - THE COMPANY Competitors gave us zero chance of success, but we succeeded. It went fantastically well. By 2005, we had created a network which covered the whole country. We have now installed more than 10,000 kilometres, including a thousand kilometres in Belgium, and we have a very broad customer base. The first users of our network were international telecom carriers such as British Telecom, Verizon and Teleglobe, as well as the mobile operators Vodafone and T-Mobile and DSL parties like BaByXL. There is little turnover amongst our customers, and the same applies to our staff. The big difference compared to ten years ago, however, is that we now also supply our services to small and medium enterprises. The atmosphere in the head office above Maarssen train station is relaxed. In the hallway, the faint sound of the intercity speeding past to Amsterdam can be heard. The hallway is large enough for social gatherings. It was there that they celebrated winning the two largest contracts in the history of the company, the connection of thousands of radio masts for T-Mobile and Vodafone. WE WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR OUR CUSTOMERS AND THIS REALLY STEMS FROM THOSE EARLY DAYS Eurofiber is not a particularly extrovert company, but this certainly justified a glass of bubbly, says Lars. The company culture is down to earth and modest. Everything has to be earned first. How else would I describe the culture? Open, honest and independent. It s all because we believe in a clear division between infrastructure and services. Eurofiber only offers the infrastructure. Our customers buy the services from third parties. This allows us to adopt a very unambiguous and honest attitude towards our customers. The two men do everything they can for their customers. However, there is one aspect which is not entirely under their control: ill-considered actions by third-party labourers. My biggest nightmare is when someone else breaks our cables, says Edwin. This happened during the construction of the ArenA in Amsterdam, when a building company put sheet piling through our cables. That kind of thing makes me lose sleep. Other than that, there are no obstacles. I could happily stay here until I retire. Eurofiber is thriving. We have exciting customers, which means the work is enjoyable and challenging. What more could you want? 17

18 THE CUSTOMERS WHEN IT COMES TO THE MANAGEMENT OF NATURE RESERVES, THE AVERAGE DUTCH PERSON WILL NOT IMMEDIATELY THINK OF THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE FUTURE: OPTICAL FIBRE. HOWEVER, THE VIEW THAT FIBRE-OPTIC NETWORKS ARE ONLY USED BY DATA-GUZZLING ORGANISATIONS SUCH AS BANKS, INSURANCE COMPANIES AND PENSION FUNDS IS A MISCONCEPTION. It s really annoying if a forest ranger has to wait a few minutes for a map to finish downloading onto his screen because of a slow DSL connection, says Gerard ter Haar, leader of the system and network management team at Natuurmonumenten (the Dutch Society for the Preservation of Nature Reserves). This influential society, with around 800,000 members, uses resources which include Eurofiber s fibre-optic infrastructure to improve its field work. The association turned to Eurofiber as the company s network expanded throughout the Netherlands. Previously, a fibre-optic connection would have been reserved solely for multinationals, but these days it is also within the reach of small and medium enterprises and organisations such as Natuurmonu menten. Another notable user is the Highways department of the Province of Utrecht. For this department, optical fibre is a solution which enables improved traffic management on the provincial roads. Large data flows are required for traffic management systems and traffic signs, and can only be transported effectively via optical fibre. However, as Eurofiber began working with the Highways department, other applications also came to light. No cyclist would ever think that lamp posts are now 18

19 SECTION 3 - THE CUSTOMERS _ZM03_ART09 IT IS THE ENDLESS INGENUITY OF THE CUSTOMERS WHICH REALLY REVEALS THE ADDED VALUE OF THE EUROFIBER INFRASTRUCTURE 19

20 Review of... Facts & Figures Eurofiber April 2006: Launch of the Ethernet platform (10 Gbps), named Fiber Light. Fiber Light is Eurofiber s answer to the desire of organisations for considerable amounts of bandwidth without having to invest excessive sums in setting up and lighting the infrastructure. May 2006: Network expanded by 1,200 kilometres, particularly in the region outside the Randstad. June 2006: Acquisition of shares by the Reggeborgh Group. November 2006: Launch of Eurofiber partner programme. Expansion of indirect sales channel to respond more effectively to the growing demand for flexible solutions based on optical fibre. The partners are free to add their own products or services to Eurofiber s open fibre-optic network. Facts & Figures World March 2006: The duet Because we believe by the singers Andrea Bocelli & Marco Borsato became a number 1 hit in the Netherlands. April 2006: As an April Fools Day joke, the introduction of a Frisian domain name extension (.fy) was announced. Huge numbers of interested internet users registered on a website created specially for the prank. May 2006: Staatsbosbeheer, the forest management agency, reported that the white-tailed eagle was breeding in the Dutch Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve. June 2006: The eighteenth World Cup was held in Germany. Italy emerged victorious. November 2006: As copper prices reached a record high, many copper components such as railway cables, lightning conductors and sundials were stolen throughout the Netherlands. 20

21 SECTION 3 - THE CUSTOMERS connected to a fibre-optic network. After 11 pm, the lighting on some cycle paths now switches on for a few minutes whenever a cyclist comes by. Optical fibre ensures a safe journey by bicycle while reducing energy costs considerably. Purchasing two 33 Gbps fibre-optic paths from Eurofiber allowed the pension management company Mn Services to improve its services, acquiring two major foreign customers as a result. The management of assets worth circa seventy billion euros involves the exchange of a great deal of data. Optical fibre is the only suitable transport medium, but it had to be robust. The network must never fail. Eurofiber s dedication led to the installation of a fibre-optic ring which is 100% diverse. The two data centres are positioned in the network in such a way that the occurrence of a fault does not bring work grinding to a halt. At Mn Services, data security is crucial. It is essential that unauthorised parties cannot access the data. The advantage of Eurofiber s dark fibre is that it does not come above ground anywhere other than the secure premises of Mn Services. The network is not dependent on a carrier and can therefore be fully customer controlled. This considerably increases reliability and security. These are just a few examples of how organisations have been making the most of a high-speed infrastructure, in sometimes unexpected ways. Not only in order to optimise their own business processes or reduce costs, but also to make completely new applications possible. Although all these things are based on the fibre-optic network, it is the endless ingenuity of the customers which really reveals the added value of the Eurofiber infrastructure. 21

22 Name Organisation Position GERARD TER HAAR Vereniging Natuurmonumenten (Dutch Society for the Preservation of Nature Reserves) Team Leader System and Network Management

23 SECTION 3 - THE CUSTOMERS DEER BENEFIT FROM FOREST MANAGEMENT VIA OPTICAL FIBRE Managing hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests and grasslands with free-ranging deer, not to mention getting the Dutch population involved in the project, would be almost impossible without modern means of communication. In fact, the Natuurmonumenten society uses every possible type of data communication: from crackly old-fashioned analogue telephone lines to ultramodern radio links and fibre-optic connections. The forest ranger of 2010 is connected. Nonetheless, Gerard ter Haar warns: Please don t romanticise the pro fession of forest ranger. These days, they manage forests and grasslands. Using modern equipment, a forest ranger will keep close track of natural developments in our GIS (Geographical Information System). The actual work of maintaining the forests is often farmed out to local contractors and is also carried out by thousands of volunteers. Gerard leads the system and network management team at Natuurmonumenten. He is based at the society s head office, which is located in the wooded surroundings of s-graveland, a village a stone s throw from Hilversum. The head office forms the beating ICT heart of the society, which has more than 800,000 members, and also houses the computer systems of the Wadden Sea Society and a number of Provincial Nature Conservation Societies. We 23

24 manage 355 nature reserves (around 100,000 hectares) from 145 locations. Every year, we buy new nature areas. Around 450 of our total of 600 staff work from dozens of different locations. The remainder work here in s-graveland. GIS is used to monitor all locations, and multimedia is also used to produce video clips for our website. The locations may vary from a barn with a tractor deep in the forest to one of the seven visitor centres which we run. There is a map of the Netherlands on the wall of Gerard s office. The large green areas run by Natuurmonumenten, the blue of the Provincial Nature Conservation Societies and the red of the State Forest Management department on the map are an Eldorado for walkers and naturalists, but not for Gerard. Coverage is his biggest concern. Although everyone seems to think that the whole world is connected by broadband or mobile phone these days, it doesn t always seem to turn out that way deep in the forests or in the middle of a meadow in the Netherlands. Mobile phone coverage in our nature reserves is often poor. This is very irritating for our special investigators (a specific task for certain forest rangers), for example. Because of the nature of their investigations, they need to be in constant contact with the central post. We are discussing this situation with the 24

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